(Friends: during this series, the messages may frequently be longer than usual due to the subject matter. Thanks for your patience, and I think you will find the considerations interesting, and hopefully, helpful in our walk with the Lord. Glen)
Part 13 – “Timeless Love”
“God is love” (I John 4:8).“I am the Lord, I change not” (Malachi 3:6).
An unchanging God who is love must always have been love. Moreover, if love “seeketh not her own,” there must always have been givers and recipients within the triune being of the Divine (I Corinthians13:5).
There have. The Lord Jesus Christ referenced this truth in His high priestly intercession prayed just before He returned to Heaven by way of the cross, the resurrection, and the ascension.
“Father… Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24).
The love of God is a timeless love. It has always been, and will always be. Before anything else existed, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit dwelt together in a selfless devotion, affection and commitment wherein love bestowed and love received comprised the very heart and existence of God. Reality, rightly understood, begins here and only here, even as the Lord Jesus referenced the glory shared with His Father, “glory… before the world was” (John 17:3).
When pondering the love of God, we must never begin by considering His love for us. We rather behold His love within the infinite scope and nature of triune Divinity. Indeed, this is why human beings possess such affinity for stories of love, affection and devotion. We exist to know with enraptured wonder the love of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and then to be drawn into such glory by the grace of the Lord Jesus.
“Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am; that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me” (John17:24).
Such glory blessedly delivers believers from the self-centered delusion of viewing ourselves as the center of our existence. Indeed, if “God loves me!” comprised the heart of our Christian experience, we might well end up more focused on ourselves than ever. Instead, we exist to know God, and to find fulfillment, joy and peace in beholding Him. Of course, this does not exclude our amazed appreciation of His love for us. On the contrary, our experience of God’s devotion grows exponentially when we discover that He made us to experience the same exhilaration He knows in devotion to others. Indeed, we best know His love for us when we fix our gaze upon His love for the Son to whom we are spiritually united.
Perhaps the truth of this most important of all matters is that we could never adequately know the love of God by merely considering that He loves us. Maybe we need to behold it in Him, that is, in His timeless and triune Being of perfect devotion, affection and commitment. Or, as the Psalmist declared…
“In Thy light shall we see light.”(Psalm 36:9)
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